Another $14.5m is being thrown at higher education providers to persuade them to increase the number of postgrad psychology places.
The federal government is making another $14.525 million available to encourage higher education providers to create additional postgraduate psychology places in a bid to address critical mental health workforce shortages.
“The Australian government recognises the current bottlenecks in the psychology training pipeline and the impacts on workforce availability and service delivery,” said the Department of Health and Aged Care in its grant opportunity guidelines, published today.
“Strategies are needed to reduce attrition between the number of students commencing undergraduate psychology studies and those going on to practice, in particular responding to the unique challenges facing postgraduate psychology.”
Today’s release is round two of four separate grand rounds, totalling $61.4 million over four years (2023-24 to 2026-27). It is to support higher education providers who have created 500 additional postgraduate psychology places over four years in courses which lead to general registration and can lead to relevant areas of practice endorsement.
The “Supporting Provisional Psychologists to Practice” grants program will fund 681 one-year internships over four years and up to 2860 Psychology Board of Australia-endorsed supervisor training places, health minister Mark Butler announced this week.
Half of these will be offered to people in First Nations communities, culturally and linguistically diverse communities and people living in regional, rural and remote areas, to prioritise areas of need.
“The grant opportunity will address the known funding shortfall for postgraduate psychology places by partially subsidising the cost of all commencing postgraduate psychology places at higher education providers demonstrating real growth in their relevant student intakes,” said the DoHAC.
The maximum grant period is 12 months. Funding under this grant opportunity must be used to support students in the 2025 academic year, and all activities must be completed by 30 June 2026.
In this round, grants will be allocated to higher education providers demonstrating a growth rate of at least 8.7% across eligible postgraduate psychology courses when comparing student intake across 2024 and 2025; funded for each eligible course at a rate of $9500 (GST exclusive) per student; and, provided for the lowest number of student places contributing to the 8.7% growth rate, at a minimum.
Study areas covered by the grants include clinical neuropsychology, clinical psychology, community psychology, counselling psychology, health psychology, educational and developmental psychology, forensic psychology, organisational psychology, and sport and exercise psychology.
Only Australian education providers are eligible for the scheme.
The full grant offer and documentation are available online here.